The ULTIMATE 2025 Accounting Practice Management Systems Tier List

Hey, I'm Isaac from Upstart.co, and in this video I'll rank all the accounting practice management systems in the market. Not only the one our clients or previous clients we have worked with use, but literally all I could find. So if you're in the market for an upgrade, stay tuned to learn whether the biggest names in the space are actually the best tools, what features each tool has or doesn't have, and what are the biggest offenders that I would never recommend. Let's start actually with the simple criteria I took into account. To rank some of these tools. Effectively, I'm listing them for ease of use and setup. How easy are they to just use on a regular basis and set up initially? How integration friendly are they? Meaning, is it, if you wanted to integrate it with other tools, do you have options available, whether it's native integrations, but also things like local tools like Zapier or potentially a public API that you can leverage? Do they have a client portal and a client experience? How good is that experience for the client if they interact with that tool at any given point? Do you have reporting, specifically reporting for your own internal operational KPIs that are often produced as a result of all the work, all the different staff you have, and it gives you a lot of visibility into your firm and how everyone's performing. The 5th, it's team collaboration. Do you have email integrated? Do you have the ability to comment and ensure that work gets done and kind of keep the communication and collaboration within the tool itself if at all possible? And last but not least, the value-to-price discrepancy, which is What's the cost of the tool? And relative to what it offers, how good is it or not? For all of these criteria, I'll be using a simple 0, 1, or 2 score. So if it's 0, it's because it doesn't do that at all or does it very poorly. If it's a 1, it means like it has some features around that, so it does okay. If it goes above and beyond and it's pretty good or among the best in the industry, then I would give it a +2. So ultimately we have a score out of 12. If they make it a 12, it's like an S tier. Or like super good. If it's 10 or 11, we'll give it an A tier. If it's 8 or 9, we'll give it a B tier. If it's 6 or 7, we'll give it a C tier. And anything less than S, it's you know what. So disclaimer, this is not a perfect scoring system. You may value other things or give more weight to certain factors. So I'm equally giving weight to all of these things. So take the final scores with a grain of salt. Okay. Let's get started with the first tool. Canopy. Ease of use and setup, 2. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal and experience, 2. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 2. Value to price discrepancy, 1. For the total score of a 9 or a B. It's actually a pretty solid product and app, both for the firm and for the client. It has good-ish email features, not necessarily world-class, but can get the job done. And it has an API that, although it's not the most robust and it doesn't really have as much as I would like to or or as much as others have, it exists. So it allows you to integrate with other tools when appropriate. Second app, Financial Sense. Ease of use and setup, 2. Integration friendly, 2. Client portal and experience, 2. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 2. Undervalued price discrepancy, 1. For a score of A. So pretty solid app. It's an app that has grown very quickly over the last 5 or so years, taking a lot of the market, and I think for a good reason. I wish their API was strong. I know they're working on it, but it's still not there yet compared to other ones. The email tools are decent, those could be better too, but overall it's honestly an app that's pretty loved by the accounting community overall. So I think it's a well-deserved, uh, A. Third app, Firm360. Ease of use and setup, 2. Integration friendly, 2. Client portal and experience, 1. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1, and value to price discrepancy, 1, for a total score of 8 or a B. If you are an Office 365/Outlook firm, you can integrate email with it. Honestly, it's a pretty simple interface. It's not a tool that's trying to be everything for everyone. And I find the interface quite simple and easy to get started with. And in terms of integrations, they do integrate with Zapier and they have an API that you can access by request. So for me, well-deserved score as well. App number 4. Jetpack workflow, ease of use and setup, 1. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal experience, 1. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 2. And value to price discrepancy, 2. For a total score of 8 or a B. Again, a tool that gives you good value for money, decent at many things, not particularly impressive by any means. I've met with the founder, good guy. It's been around for probably, I don't know, 6, 7 years at this point, maybe more. So it's a tool that we've had Firms that have used it in the past, and they were very happy with it. So it has its pros and cons. App number five, Carbon is of use in setup. One integration friendly. Two client portal and client experience. One reporting. Two team collaboration. Two and value the price discrepancy. One for a total score of nine or a B. I'd say Carbon's probably one of the best all-rounders. It's one of those tools that's like pretty good at most things, although not necessarily like world class at a particular thing. I like to say like Carbon's almost always. It's a sensible choice for most firms in most circumstances. It's kind of like the Prius of accounting practice management systems. Like you wouldn't necessarily suggest it's a bad choice for pretty much anyone. If email, it's at the core of your business, they probably have the most robust, you know, time-tested email triage feature for email to be the center of where the requirements from your clients come through, where everything's kind of like distributed from there. So if that's something that you resonate with and you think you benefit from, definitely check them out. App number 6, Mango. Ease of use and setup, 1. Integration friendly, 0. Client portal and experience, 1. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1. Value discrepancy, 1, for a total score of 5, or the crap tier. I'm sorry guys, you could do better, but it's what it is based on this score. App number 7, Uku. Ease of use and setup, 2. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal and experience, 2. Reporting, 2. Team collaboration, 2. And value discrepancy, 1, for a total score of 10 or an A. Actually, I was pretty surprised by the features of this tool and how beautifully designed it is. I think that it's clearly, it was clearly built by, you know, professionals. Actually, the co-founder is a product designer, which doesn't really surprise me because often we hear a lot of practice management systems say that, oh, it's built by accountants for accountants. And then the interface sucks and you wonder why. I think the last one we mentioned may be an example of that. In terms of Uku as it relates to integrations is something we care a lot about. They have Zapier coming this year supposedly and have an API available. So that was surprising for me to learn as well. And I think the reason they're not as popular in the US and Canada, or maybe you haven't heard of it before, is because they're European, is a European team. But honestly, I think it's a tool that more US, Canada, and other countries should take a deeper look into because it It's pretty solid. App number 8, Count. Ease of use and setup, 1. Integration friendly, 0. Client portal experience, 1. Reporting, 2. Team collaboration, 1. And value discrepancy, 1, for a total score of 6 or a C. So actually, we recently onboarded a client that uses Count and it has a lot. I'll say that. So I'll give them credit for that. But it looks like both the user interface and the backend, they've just been adding things on top of things. Like guys, it's not acceptable to have like 27 tabs in your homepage. You can get a you know user experience designer to redesign your whole interface, make things easier to use, better organize things. I think that would be a good investment now with your recent round of funds. So despite having a lot of like built-in reporting features and some email integrations, I'll still gave it a two on the reporting side because it has a lot of quote unquote quantity. But actually, I think the quality of those reports could improve. The client we onboarded that's using Calm. Actually the reporting, they wanted to build a separate reporting capability, which is what we're helping them do precisely because of that. Despite the amount of reports they have, they didn't feel it met their needs. And I'll say I give it a 0 in integration friendly, but those guys have been kind enough to like provide us access to the database on the backend that has allowed us to do something, but is significantly more work and more challenging than if they had a public API, for example, if they had some sort of Zapier or Make integration. will make things just a lot, lot more easier. App number 9, Xero Practice Manager. Ease of use and setup, 2. Integration friendly, 0. Client portal and experience, 0. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1. And value discrepancy, 2. A pretty expensive tool. I'll give it that. It actually has a lot of native integrations with like Xero apps and things like that. So if that's what you use, maybe it does make sense for you. If you're a Xero-based firm, of course. It's probably a good argument to use it. We've worked with firms that came to us specifically to help them with some reporting. So I think it's proof that maybe their reporting isn't as useful as it could be. So if you're on it, maybe I wouldn't be pressed to switch out of it if you're not unhappy. But if you're in the market looking for a tool, especially if you're not a serious firm, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that as one of the first sources to look into personally. App number 10, Keeper. Ease of use and setup, 1. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal and experience, 2. Reporting specifically for internal purposes, 0. Team collaboration, 1. And value discrepancy, 1, for a total score of 6 or a Z. I'll say this, actually I was somewhat surprised by the score, at least based on what we have, because actually I like Keeper and so does the community. This score might feel unfair because it's a great tool, but keep in mind I'm judging it as a PM tool, which I think it's trying to grow into. But I think what the score proves is that maybe it's not quite there yet. So for that, I think the score is kind of what it is at the moment. For example, they have reporting for your clients' financials and actually it's pretty good, but reporting for the firm itself is kind of not really there. As it relates to the team collaboration features they have, they recently launched email, still pretty early stage for us to make any judgment on how good is it and what experience other firms are having with it. In my experience, most firms that use Keeper have another practice management tool that they use for that side of the work, the reporting and all of that. Examples might be Carbon Keeper. I know actually a couple of firms that have both of those tools at the same time. I know one that has ClickUp and Keeper as an example. Again, keep that in mind. I gave it a 1 in value-price discrepancy. I was kind of going back and forth because it'll depend on your firm. For example, their pricing is client-based. As opposed to user-based. So if you're a low-volume shop, as an example, it would be great because if you have 50 clients but you do $2 million, then you're gonna pay like $500 a month. But if you're like a high-volume shop and you're making $600 grand a month— a year, and you have 100 clients, then, you know, it's gonna be a more significant chunk of your revenue to pay for the, for the tool. With that said, let's move into app number 11, iFirm. Ease of use and setup, 1. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal and experience, 1. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1. And value discrepancy, 2, for a total score of 7. So it goes into the C tier. It has a good set of features. It has an API available, although you have to pay for it, which is not necessarily something I'm a fan of. The interface is so-so. The portal is so-so. So decent reporting, nothing to, you know, write home about, but cover most of firms' need. And frankly, the price is not bad. Like you're paying, I think, $180 a year for a user. And $420 for a bundle of 3 users. So it's like $15 a user or less what you end up paying for the tool. We have a firm based out of Canada. Actually, they are in the market. I don't say they're in the market, but they're considering migrating away from it. But at least for the time they've been there, they haven't been particularly dissatisfied. Like it's done the job. Let's move into app number 12, Practice CS. Ease of use, 0. Integration friendly, 0. Client portal and experience, zero. Reporting, one. Team collaboration, one. And value price discrepancy, one for a total score of three and goes into the crap here. No comments. Every time I see a website and I see an interface that looks like from the eighties and they're talking about hardware requirements, that's a massive red flag that they are in the eighties mentality still. So not a tool that I would at all consider. App number thirteen, similar tool. It's Umbio. Ease of use and setup, zero. Integration frame. Client portal and experience 0, reporting 1, team collaboration 1, and value discrepancy 1 for effectively the same score as PracticeCS. And frankly, for the same reasons. App number 14 is Pixie, UK-based system. Ease of use and setup 2, integration friendly 1, client portal and experience 1, reporting 1, team collaboration 1, value to price discrepancy 2 for a total score of 8 or a V. Similar to Keeper, it's priced by client, so you can have like unlimited users at $129 a month, although you have a cap on the number of clients you can have. If you have few clients for your revenue, like it often makes a lot of sense. App number 15, TaxDome. Ease of use, 2. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal and experience, 2. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1. Value to price discrepancy, 1 for a total score of 8 or AB. We've worked with clients that really like it. It's a pretty closed system though. Doesn't really make it easy to integrate with. I wouldn't say it's impossible because at least it is in the cloud. tool, and there's some RPA and other things that we could do to integrate with it when required. But, and they have a lot of native integrations as well as something they've worked with, but it's a tough system to work with. Let's move quickly from here. Senta, ease of use 1, integration friendly 2, client portal 1, reporting 1, team collaboration 1, value to price discrepancy 2, for a total score of 8 or a B. Iro Workflow, ease of use and setup 1, integration friendly 2, client portal or experience. 0. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1. Value-price discrepancy, 2, for a total score of 7 or 8. C, Cone. That's C-O-N-E. Ease of use and setup, 2. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal and experience, 2. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1. Value-price discrepancy, 2, for a total score of 9. This is actually a venture-backed application that started as a proposal tool, but it's kind of grown to much more than that. And the pricing is like $8 or $11 a month. Per user, I suspect that will increase as they gain market share. But at least for now, it's a pretty good deal. App number nineteen, Levy. Ease of use two, integration friendly one, client portal experience zero, reporting one, team collaboration two, and value to price discrepancy two for a total score of eight or a B. Similarly priced to the top guys like the Carbon Financial Sense and so on, but I feel it does offer actually some additional features. And shout out to Jean. The owner, which I've met and had the opportunity to interact with. App number 20, Legio. Ease of use, 2. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal experience, 2. Reporting, 0. Team collaboration, 1. Value discrepancy, 1. For a total score of 7 or a C. Client Hub. Ease of use, 2. Integration friendly, 1. Client portal experience, 2. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 2. And value to price discrepancy, 2 for a score of 10 or an A. I was actually surprised to see that they've now— I don't know how recent, but they have month-end close and categorization features previously like popularized by Keeper. They have very basic integrations, very basic reports, but I definitely see it working like for a small firm that's primarily bookkeeping-based. App number 22, Elephant. Ease of use and setup, 2. Integration friendly, 0. Client portal and experience, 1. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1. Value discrepancy, 1, for a total score of 6. It goes into the C tier. And last but not least, FYI. Ease of use, we have 1. Integration friendly, 2. Client portal experience, 0. Reporting, 1. Team collaboration, 1. And value to price discrepancy, 1, for a total score of C and goes into the C tier. This is actually a tool that's more popular in Australia and New Zealand. We're working with a New Zealand-based firm that uses it. If you do specifically 0, And Outlook. It's actually not a bad tool. It has also like a two-way sync with Zero Practice Manager for certain projects and clients. It's not super easy to work with for integration standpoint. We were able to pull a lot of data and integrate with other tools because it has some built-in automations. It has an API. It has a Zapier integration. So allow us to get our job done. My final thoughts. Just because a tool has a high score doesn't mean it's the best. Certainly not the best for everyone. None of them are perfect. None of them will ever be. It was a very simplistic scoring system as you saw. I certainly avoid the crap tier. The C tier, there's actually some good tools there that are good at different things that maybe the score system that I laid out didn't cover. In our opinion though, your practice management system is your core app to manage client work, but you always need a secondary app to complement it. Why? Because to manage your leads, your opportunities, to email your entire client base or text message them or call them, none of these tools will do it well, frankly. So for that, check out my video on the best best CRMs for accounting firms. I'll see you on the next one, and until then, stay efficient.